CD Spin Art
Here is a great example of a visitor taking an existing exhibit piece and making it so much more fun. This visitor turned our circuit blocks into an art project. We were exploring the different circuit blocks and when we got to the block that contains an old CD drive I was asked if we had any CDs to test…
Chester’s field trip
We get a lot of interesting visitors to the Museum every day. This was the first time that a raccoon decided to visit. This particular raccoon was from a classroom that gives each student an opportunity to take something home, and sometimes it’s a puppet or a stuffed animal. The family is then encouraged to take the creature somewhere interesting…
“Warmth” Workshops
Our January programmatic theme of “warmth” meant return visits by two great Guest Makers, Theresa Baughman and Deren Guler. Check out some photos from their workshops! “Warm Fuzzies” with Theresa Baughman Theresa, one of our former MAKESHOP interns, set up our workshop area with everything kids needed to sew a pillow that can be warmed up in the microwave. There wasn’t…
Puppets and technology
How do you mix paper bag crafts with technology? Our usual answer to a question like that is “put a light on it!” Basically, we tried to figure out what we could add to a paper bag puppet to make it more “techy.” Rebecca created a very cool example that combines a paper bag with an electronic circuit. When you…
Puppet Prototype
Each month, our staff picks a programmatic theme for MAKESHOP that helps us to decide on what activities to provide. Our theme in MAKESHOP for the month of February is puppets. We decided to explore different ways to make puppets by reimagining recycled materials, sewing finger puppets and cloth puppets, building marionettes and playing with shadows puppets. As always, we will integrate digital…
Make some noise
The students from the Museum’s after school program, YouthALIVE!, visited MAKESHOP a couple of weeks ago to work on a build challenge. They spent three days trying to design and build something that made noise. As always, it is a fun experience to work with this group of kids. They created some amazing and inventive projects over the course of…
Bombs away!
These days in Pittsburgh, I find myself sitting around waiting for signs of spring. Until last weekend. I found the perfect remedy to beat the wintertime blues… BATH BOMBS! What better way to treat yourself than soaking up warmth in a bath tub or hot tub, knowing you made your very own bath fizzy. The ingredients and directions are quite…
Chair + Lights = ?
The month of December is over and our GLOW theme is done, but that doesn’t mean that we are not still trying to add lights to anything and everything in MAKESHOP. After spending an entire month playing with lights and creating all kinds of switches, I decided that it would be really cool to make a chair that lights up…
Teenagers and Shopbots
The Museum sees a lot of visitors every week. Most of them are under five years old, but every week during the school year, a group of 6-8th grade students visit the Museum for our after-school program, YouthALIVE! These students visit MAKESHOP about once a month. We try to give them design challenges to help them to be creative and…
A family’s prototype
Here is a quick story about an amazing pair of makers that spent an entire Saturday working on a single idea, which was “What can you do with a mousetrap?” When I joined this father and son team, they were already under production with their creation: a mousetrap car. Apparently the dad saw that we had a couple of mousetraps…